Healing Touch – Hospice Care For Your Loved One
By Mary Frost
Healing Touch is a gentle therapeutic method widely used to ease the dying process. Many hospices and hospice nurses now offer this compassionate hands-on care to their patients along with medications and standard nursing care. With the help of Healing Touch, the dying process can transcend physical suffering and become a time of sacred passage.
How Healing Touch works to ease the dying process
- It provides whole person care, for body, mind, emotions and spirit
- Promotes general relaxation
- Allows for better quality rest and sleep
- Has been shown to reduce pain and other symptoms
- Relieves anxiety
- Works in tandem with other treatments
- Is gentle, noninvasive, and utilizes light, caring touch
Many times a terminally ill patient at a hospital or home is in some sort of crisis: severe pain, breathing difficulty, seizure, extreme anxiety, hopelessness, loneliness, or fear of dying. At these times the family members often feel helpless. There is fear, confusion, and a need for someone to intervene and guide the individuals through the crisis and back to a sense of peace, control, and comfort. When this is accomplished, there can be movement toward acceptance and anticipation of the human spirit being set free from the physical suffering. Along with traditional nursing interventions and medications, a Healing Touch treatment can be offered to the patient by the nurse or Healing Touch practitioner. Family members and others who are serving as patient caregivers may benefit from a treatment as well.